Tag: bloggingfundamentals

Be that as it may, Blog School, which I finally finished (it’s supposed to be 2 weeks, but I took that at-your-own-pace provision seriously) recommends promising you a Regular Feature to encourage myself to post regularly, but since posting regularly in itself would be a surprise, here you are!. I’m not sure what kind of Feature would work in this admittedly freewheeling format, but maybe I’ll come up with something later.

So here I sit, eating M&M’s in proper colorlogical order, from my least to my most favorite colors (brown-yellow-green-orange-red-blue–if the vending machine doesn’t give me any blue ones, I am entitled to get a 2nd handful to rectify the situation).

I am freshly back from vacation, and was ready to go back on it with my first baby-daddy call. “My baby daddy almost hit my other ex-boyfriend and his parents with his car! We never have gotten along.” Then why did you have sex with a guy you don’t like? Another baby mama called me a “stupid-@ss bitch.” Hey, I don’t have a baby-daddy, so I suspect I’m smarter than you are. Of course, she probably doesn’t have to think about M&M’s before she eats them. We all have our own gifts and abilities.

YOU CAN’T GET THERE FROM HERE

METS Transportation has finally done what they’ve tried to do for years and cut the West Side bus service down to a single route. (Since they have meager resources, because PROPERTY TAX CAPS, they had to do it to make room for Sunday bus service.) So now, if I’m going to work and need to head north, I have to get on a bus headed south. If I’m headed home and need to go south, I have to get on a bus headed north. It’s like it’s uphill both ways. (It actually is uphill both ways, since there is more than one hill involved.) Walking the whole way, rather than going around in circles on the bus, may actually save me time. How To Meet Your Weight-Loss Resolution Goals!

THINGS YOU SHOULDN’T DO WHEN YOU’RE DRUNK

–Cut your toenails.

DRAMA DEPARTMENT

“My relatives were visiting for New Year’s, and they left something that looks sketchy.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a pipe and some kind of plastic pack.”

It turned out to be a nightlight and a battery pack.

THINGS WALGREEN’S THINKS I NEED, ACCORDING TO MY FACEBOOK FEED

–shave gel (although they were uncertain what scent I’d prefer)

–something to reinforce my earlobes so I could wear injuriously heavy earrings

–something that would enable me to pee in a car

DID YOU KNOW?

–I used a Crown Royal bag as a purse in high school? That’s how much of a hipster I was. I’ve never tasted Crown Royal.

HOW I SPENT NEW YEAR’S EVE

Rom said, “You’re having a redneck New Year’s Eve–on the couch, drinking Redd’s and eating ramen.”

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WordPress has a feature called “Writing Prompts,” which is a word-of-the-day designed to give you ideas for a blog post. I’ve avoided these because it feels like cheating (if I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed!), but Blog School made it an assignment, and who am I to disobey a direct order?

The word of the day was “conundrum,” and you’re in luck, because I had one!

I was in the restroom at Walgreen’s. This is an achievement in itself, because you have to bother the pharmacy staff to let you in. (If you hear “Code Q” over the intercom there, that’s what it means. And “I.C.3” means there are 3 or more people at checkout and someone needs to come up and help. “I See Three”–get it?) (I will report back on any more of their secret codes as I decipher them.)

The lock on the stall door had been broken long ago, and replaced with one of those slide-a-cylinder-into-a-hole ones. (Sounds dirty, doesn’t it?) It didn’t align exactly right, and I had to shove it in forcefully to get the lock to engage. (Sounds even dirtier.) So I did what I’d come to do, and then found that I couldn’t get the lock back open with any amount of shoving.

I gave my conundrum a moment’s thought. One of my thoughts was the embarrassing awareness that my FanBase might think the restroom at Walgreen’s was the most appropriate place for me to be confined. Then I thought, Do I just stay in here until they let the next customer into the restroom, and then yell HEY, I’M TRAPPED IN HERE? Do I call 411 to get Walgreen’s phone number and call the pharmacy? (“It’s coming from inside the building!”) Do I call 911 and say, “I’m stuck in this restroom and need extrication”? (Note to coworkers: Refrain from any constipation-related remarks.) Or do I just panic and start screaming?

What I ended up doing was what I’d once heard an employee there say she’d had to do. I dropped down and, thankful I was wearing a slick-finish rain jacket, slithered under the door like a serpent. So I suppose I could crawl under barbed wire/enemy fire like soldiers do in the movies, although I can’t imagine how I’d get that opportunity. Oh, wait–Trump was elected President.

And the entire adventure was actually unnecessary, since the room door locks, so I didn’t need to lock the stall door at all.

MORE BATTLES WITH INANIMATE OBJECTS

The other day at work, I unwrapped a Fun Size (as opposed to the Work Size I should have had) Snickers bar. I popped it into my mouth, and tried to casually toss the wrapper into the trash, but it refused to go. It clung to my hand, and then to my other hand, like a Harpo Marx routine, or like putting tape on a cat’s head. (Not that I’ve ever done that, but I understand it’s been done.) I struggled in silence, hoping my colleagues wouldn’t notice I was being beset by snack food, and with a final violent effort, cast that sucker into the trash like Satan hurling a soul into hell. It came back out. I kid you not, it ACTUALLY FELL UP and reattached itself to my hand. The LAW OF GRAVITY had been broken on account of me. Disbelieving, I repeated the process, and it did it again. The third time, having proven its point, it finally agreed to go in the wastebasket.

ANOTHER NEW EXPERIENCE I HAD

Have you ever had a piece of fried chicken go up your sleeve? I didn’t think so.

911 OVERHEARD

“If he said he’d beat you up if you went over there, why are you going over there?”

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{Note: There was originally a line here that I edited out, and I can’t figure out how to make the white space go away, so I substituted this line in its place. Carry on.} {Yeah, I know this is more than one line, but I care insufficiently to do anything about it. Proceed.}

“YOU’RE NOT AUTISTIC, YOU’RE JUST ECCENTRIC!”

On the Anonymously Autistic blog, where I’ve been loitering lately, I found the official diagnostic definition here. (<== Look! Did you see that? I made a link! My first ever! This Blog School is turning out to be worthwhile after all! Maybe I better restrain my enthusiasm until I publish this and see if it actually works.) Leaving aside the obsessive way in which I carefully checked off each of the listed attributes and rated them for level of severity, I think I can put your doubts to rest with two simple observations:

I rock back and forth when I listen to music. They call this “self-soothing” behavior, which I originally took issue with, thinking, “How would I feel if I didn’t do it? Oh–nervous and twitchy. OK.”

As I walk along {“I wonder what went wrong, with our love, the love that was so strong…” Sorry. Too much listening to music.}, I often recite sequential lists of dates. I will not bore you with how these dates are selected.

OK, make that 3 observations: I have difficulty recognizing people’s faces if I encounter them outside of their accustomed settings–colleagues outside of work, parishioners outside of church, Nick pretty much everywhere, etc. (I worked with that poor thing IN THE SAME ROOM, ON THE SAME SHIFT, FOR A YEAR–or so he claims–and don’t remember it.) My husband is the only exception. So if you run into me at Walgreen’s, or follow me down the street in your vehicle hoping to give me a ride, expect a blank stare initially. The only way to avoid that is to live with me for years. No, I’m not inviting you to move in.

Where the “high-functioning” thing (or maybe just “maturity”) comes in is, I’ve learned to not display my weirder traits in public, and I’ve also mastered Life Skills 101 (although I’m not sure about Life Skills 201). For example, not knowing how to dress properly got me in trouble at 3 different jobs. Since there were no dress codes to tell me exactly how to proceed, I just wore what I did when I wasn’t working. Back then, that involved lots of see-through shirts, halter tops, and black goth-y stuff that hadn’t yet become fashionable. So one supervisor told me, “Just because there’s no dress code doesn’t mean you can wear whatever you want.” See, I’d thought that was exactly what it meant. The “obvious” alternative–looking around to see what other employees were wearing–simply never occurred to me. How did I eventually discover that tactic? I read it in an article. Combine that sort of thing with my belief that making sustained eye contact with anyone will turn me to stone, and you can see why employers used to edge me out as soon as they could figure a way that wouldn’t involve paying me unemployment benefits.

Along with Life Skills, a structured and/or familiar environment helps a great deal, so I know just what to expect. I also have various Rules, so I don’t take forever to make decisions like, Where should I sit on this bus? What color underwear should I put on today? (Although I actually make those particular decisions in the reverse order from the way I just listed them.) (You know, it JUST OCCURRED TO ME that I could solve that one problem by just buying all-white underwear. You learn something new every day!)

Also, here (again from Anonymously Autistic) is an example of how one can “build” small talk “from the ground up,” so to speak.

Well, that was somewhat embarrassing, but I’ll live. Enough about me and why I’m weird. I’ve already dawdled over this post for too long, afflicted with “but what if they don’t want to read about my problems?” Well, if you don’t want to read about my problems, YOU’RE IN THE WRONG PLACE.

WHAT OTHER PROBLEMS DO I HAVE?

I have scratchy glitter on me from carrying Christmas packages. This is not optimum.

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Well, now I’m experiencing technical difficulties–user error, no doubt–so you’ll probably have to wait till the end for the video. Maybe I should have waited till I finished the post to embed it. The featured bird can also Walk Like an Egyptian, but you’ll have to find that out for yourself.

THIS JUST IN

It’s been a long time since we checked in with Archer & Fiona, who are now 5. Each made a statement today that really tells you what kind of person they are:

Archer: I was showing them the very video displayed in this post, and then they asked me what was in the 2 little boxes on the bookshelf. Hoping this was a one-time thing–if I had to explain everything in my office, we’d be there a very long time–I opened the boxes and showed them the cute little cobra that wiggles when you touch it, and the cute little ladybug whose legs wiggle. Then I put the boxes away, and Archer said, “But do they move when the boxes are closed?” Whoa. Zen tree in the forest, man. Shades of Schrodinger’s cat (who I sincerely hope is not dead).

Fiona: I got in the car with the twins and their mother (she was giving me a ride down to St Joe), and we said farewell to Rom. He told Fiona “Have a good day!” and she said, “I will. You know I always do.”

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The musically-astute will recognize my I GOT NO GOALS statement in the previous post as a take-off on Alice Cooper:

“And we got no class!

And we got no principals!

And we got no innocence!

We can’t even think of a word that rhymes!”

But they are more clever than you think, given the double meanings of “class” and “principles” illustrated above. Speaking of which, I always remember the different spellings from the trick they taught us in school, “When you mean the principal of a school, it ends with ‘pal,’ because the principal is your pal!” Even as a kid, I thought that was lame. Speaking of which, I remember senior year of high school, standing in the hall during one of the lunch periods (the school was big enough that we had more than one) talking to the assistant principal, who was in charge of attendance and discipline. He pointed out the window to the courtyard, and said, “You see those kids standing around? Half of them are supposed to be in class right now.” I myself was supposed to be in class right then, and snickered inwardly at his ignorance. Of course, I now realize that he was probably perfectly aware of that, and that’s why he brought it up. (And for those of you who are thinking, “Why, World Leader! We didn’t think of you as the class-cutting type!,” let me just say that the class I was cutting was gym, and I didn’t start cutting it until a classmate pointed out that I was failing it anyway, so why bother to show up? It actually hadn’t occurred to me to skip it until then. And you see what a wuss I was even so–I didn’t even leave the school grounds, just prowled the empty halls.)

SPEAKING OF WHICH, after reading my account of meeting up with Nick unexpectedly and not noticing him, Rom said, “You’re a strange person.” But what does he know? He’s only lived with me for 36 years.

IT’S SCRATCHY GLITTER SEASON! WATCH OUT FOR IRRITATED SENSIBILITIES!

For once, I mean that literally, and not as arcane symbolism. Speaking of which, FanBaser and sort-of-coworker T. Rex reports that she knew about me when I started in Police Records, as “the Record Room intellectual.” I guess every Record Room needs one. And it sounds more distinguished than “the one who doesn’t wear a bra,” which I also was.

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A few people have gently suggested (well, Nick not-so-gently) that maybe I should post something. And Blog School prompted, “If you post regularly for six months, what would you hope to accomplish?” I hope to accomplish posting for six months, obviously, now that I’ve established that you can’t take that for granted. And, daring to nag me further, “If you blog regularly for the next year, what would your goals be?” I believe I made myself clear in my very first post that I GOT NO GOALS. This is just inchoate rambling. If you find it charming, good.

ENDLESS DRAMA CANNOT CHANGE

I dreamed I was a political prisoner, and one of my captors said, “You know, I’ve always hated you.” I found this ominous, under the circumstances.

FASHION POLICE ALERT

I like to visualize the outfits on suspects described to us by 911 callers. My previous favorite was the guy who shoplifted a whole outfit, from hat to shoes, in shades of blue and white. But the best possible outfit was produced by a woman who was described as wearing “a black top with unicorns on it, and no pants.” You know, no pants goes with everything.

911 OVERHEARD

“So there’s an eyeball in the middle of your rug staring at you?….Ma’am, we can’t help you with a spider.”

DID YOU KNOW?

…that calling 911 is not like ordering in a restaurant? You don’t get to specify what happens. For example, saying “I want him arrested” doesn’t make it so.

Caller: I want to report my car stolen. This guy said he was going to fix it, but he didn’t, and he’s got it locked in his garage and won’t let me have it. {Turns out, by the way, that she hadn’t paid him, which she didn’t mention when she called.}

Me: Ma’am, that’s not a stolen vehicle. That’s a civil disagreement, and you need to contact an attorney.

Caller: But there’s no contract!

Me: That makes no difference.

We went back and forth with “Does too!” and “Does not!” for some minutes, before I finally said, “I’ll send you an officer anyway, so he can tell you the same thing I just told you,” and she talked over me and ended with “And I’m going to get a stolen report!”

Well, she did not get her wish, which led to…

“I want to file a grievance. That sergeant didn’t do anything he was supposed to.”

Me (genuinely curious): “What was he supposed to do?”

“Take all our information and charge this guy with auto theft.”

I said, “Well, you could call internal affairs, but that won’t turn it into a stolen vehicle.”

She screamed, “What a bitch!” and hung up. Hey, maybe she was the person who hated me in my dream.

BLOWS AGAINST THE EMPIRE

The city still doesn’t provide us with paper towels in the break room, thinking that’s a luxury the taxpayers shouldn’t have to underwrite. But after the dispenser in the restroom had been refilled, and the previous roll with just a little left on it had been put on the top of the dispenser, I made a Command Decision and took that roll into the break room. Next time I looked, it had been brought back into the bathroom. ACCEPT IT! THE CITY WANTS YOU TO WAVE YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR UNTIL THEY DRY!

I ASK YOU TO JUDGE BETWEEN US

I was walking down St Joe the other day, and a car on a side street had its snout stuck into traffic. When I started to cross the street, it pulled back, so it was no longer impeding my progress. I nodded, acknowledging the courtesy, and crossed. Then I heard someone yelling behind me, “You never even looked!” I turned around, my mind doing its usual clumsy gear-shifting in spontaneous human interactions–“Why is that person yelling? Is he yelling at me? Who is that guy, anyway?” Bear in mind that I was thinking that last as I was LOOKING AT HIM. It took a moment (about as long as it takes when the newscaster says, “And we’re live with our reporter on the scene” and said reporter just stands there blankly for a moment until they hear the prompt in their ear) before I realized it was a certain Nick, with whom I have a passing familiarity. He was wriggling with excitement and delight at seeing me so unexpectedly. He was accompanied by his mate and his–well, “spawn” is such an ugly word, so let’s just say “cubs.” He said they’d actually been stalking me for some blocks, waiting to see if I’d notice. As, he implied, any normal person would have. The question I put to you, FanBase, is, Do people normally peer into every small black car they pass, to see if they know someone inside? I thought not.

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I want you to listen to this (hopefully) embedded video and imagine Donald Trump singing it.

Remember all that whining I did (sure you do, it was in the last post) about accidentally deleting that post and having to re-type it all? Well, guess what? It was saved after all, just not where I’d been looking for it. So I did all that typing in vain. You can stop laughing now.

I got a spam message that said, “I looked at your post ‘The Parents of Baby Corn’ and thought that you could increase your blog’s traffic if your subject matter was something readers were interested in.” Or if they knew what the hell I’m talking about.

CRISIS IN PROGRESS–ENDLESS DRAMA CANNOT CHANGE

Caller: “I want to know the reason for the closing of this city’s only east-west thoroughfare”…pausing dramatically…“the Lloyd Expressway.” I sternly informed him that there are many east-west thoroughfares, although everyone forgot them as if they had never been once the Lloyd Expressway was completed. The reason for its closing, incidentally, was that someone had been killed on it.

And you gotta love a call that begins with “I just heard someone in the background there talking about Yankee Candles. I find that unacceptable.” (Yes, we are allowed to talk about topics other than work, so bite me.) and ends with “Just forget it. If I end up dead, it’ll be in the paper.” (Well, if I end up dead, it’ll be in the paper, too. So what?)

There’s probably a punctuation error in that last paragraph, but I am too weary with life to correct it.

WHAT THIS COUNTRY HAS COME TO

Halloween inflatables? Really? I can hardly wait for the coming of President’s Day inflatables. Donald Trump will probably require them.

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Just my usual, orange skull t-shirt (the black one bit the dust last year because I mysteriously got a chocolate stain on it), too much makeup (Onyx eyeshadow and Currant lipstick), and my witchy hair, which is sunbleached and too reddish by now to be scary. Unlike my eyebrows, variously characterized as “like Frida Kahlo” and “like a serial killer.”

TRICK-OR-TREATERS AT MY HOUSE

–a wizard and Pikachu. Unknown in what universe these two would coexist.

–a ninja and a knight. Or whatever has a silver knight helmet and a red scarf over its face, I don’t know.

–a man and his son who apparently dressed up as each other. I was drunk by then, so I’m not sure. And I was distracted by the fact that the grown man also had a trick-or-treat bag, so he could get as much candy as his son.

What I’m getting at here is, I ended up eating most of the Kit-Kats myself.

IN OTHER KIT-KAT-RELATED NEWS…

Bet you never thought you’d read those words!

I read a story on Facebook in which a man left a Kit-Kat in the drink cup in his car. He came back to his parked vehicle and found the Kit-Kat gone and a note which read: “I love Kit-Kats, and I tried your door and it was unlocked, so I took it. I didn’t take anything else. I’m sorry, and hungry.” The comments on this story included The Two People Who Comment On Every Internet Story:

“He obviously made this story up just to get his 15 minutes of fame,”

and, “How can all you people think this is funny? What’s funny about a hungry person reduced to stealing a candy bar?

CRISIS IN PROGRESS–THERE’S A FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING

“Caller said his neighbor threatened him with a crossbow. Other party also called and said the original caller threatened him with a golf club.” You know what they say about bringing a golf club to a crossbow fight.

MORE COMPLAINING ABOUT STUFF

There is now a spring-loaded glitter bomb. I am opposed to glitter because I don’t like texture. Everything should be smooth and soft.

AND STILL MORE

I clicked on the wrong thing and deleted my entire post. This is rewritten from memory, so if it doesn’t meet your expectations, that’s my excuse. Now my hand hurts from typing. (You know, the one I slammed on the concrete back in May.) Life is hard.

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On the way home from work last night, it suddenly came to me–“I really miss blogging.” Well, WHAT’S STOPPING ME? And thank you to that person who keeps checking back, which I can only interpret as stalking.

Since I have obviously lost all sense of responsibility to my readership, I will dispense with explanations and apologies, and just get right into it.

A REMINDER FROM THE FASHION POLICE

Leggings are not pants, flip-flops are not shoes, as it is, was, and ever shall be, world without end, amen.

PROPOSED AUTOMATED MESSAGES FOR TEXT FROM 911

“Your cell phone called 911. If this is a butt dial, your butt is apparently smarter than you are.”

“Your cell phone called 911. Did you know that those flip phones you make fun of old people for having make it virtually impossible to butt-dial? You may wish to consider purchasing one.”

“Your cell phone called 911. Merely dialing us, then continuing to scream at the other party without telling us where you are is not accomplishing anything.” {Nick, if you say, “‘Dialing?’ Who still says that?,” I will stripe you.}

“Are you calling to report a wreck? Don’t you see all the other people who whipped their phones out at the same time?”

“If you’re calling because you’re involved in a domestic dispute, and you see that the other party is already calling, there is no need for you to call also ‘to tell your side of the story.'”

WAYS TO START A CALL THAT STRIKE FEAR INTO MY HEART

“I have a situation…”

“Let me give you a little backstory…”

“Three years ago…”

ADVERTISEMENT FOR A NEWS SITE

“Dive into Election 2016!” No, eww.

I just broke a fingernail plugging my phone charger into the wall. Not good at life.

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Is that not the best book title ever? It’s an actual book, too, which I need a copy of. After all, Nick has his hands full keeping me out of fights.

AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT I’M (IN)CAPABLE OF

There was an intern observing at work the other day. I noticed this as I came in. A couple hours later, I left the operations room, headed for the restroom. Unbeknownst to your World Leader, the intern had slipped out the door behind me, headed in the same direction. I did not realize this until I got to the restroom door and heard someone behind me. I whirled around and stared at her. If you’ve ever heard the noise a CD makes when it skips, that is the state my mind was in as I tried to process who this strange person must be-a person, you’ll remember, I had noticed at the beginning of the shift. “I’m…going to use the restroom?” she offered tentatively–understandably, since I seemed intent on guarding the door. I then muttered something lame about not knowing she was there.

I told this story to Rom when I got home. He sighed and said, “Now that person thinks you’re insane.” Hey, I’m only a little insane.

HEY, I ACHIEVED SOMETHING!

Does everyone like the blog’s slightly-snazzy new look? I learned that in Blog School. No, I don’t remember how I did it, and no, I doubt I’d be able to do it again.

CRISIS IN PROGRESS UPDATE

I believe the Fall Festival will be overrun with clowns, giving meaning at last to the term “clownin’.” Remember that I will eventually be visiting the festival with Nick, as soon as I can make something up along those lines.

OVERHEARD FROM ACROSS THE ROOM

“I found someone in my yard who is either disoriented or deceitful.” Or maybe disingenuous? Have you considered that?

MILDLY AMUSING ADVENTURES

Be advised that the perfect shade of red may be found on the crepe myrtle bushes by Banterra Bank at St Joe/Delaware.

DOING MY CIVIC DUTY

Since Stephen Colbert is doing it, I also will have live coverage on Election Day. I will also be drunk. Well, only after voting, lest I get to the polling place and base my vote not on the Common Good, but on the basis of “Let’s see what happens!”

PERSONAL MAINTENANCE

You know how they’re always trying to tell you not to put cotton swabs in your ears? Well, now they’re trying to say you shouldn’t put anything in your nose, either. So we should just let boogers fall out naturally? I don’t think so.

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What? Where am I?

I am currently a 911 dispatcher in the Midwest. I have opinions, which I hope to present in a (usually) humorous manner. I feel somewhat intimidated by the pressure to appear charming and interesting on this page. And I hate scratchy glitter.